


Remedial Potions

by ac1d6urn (Acid), Sinick



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fisting, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/ac1d6urn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinick/pseuds/Sinick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is in need of remedial potions; Snape is in need of remedial relaxation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remedial Potions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Snarry-a-thon 2012 prompt: The Forty-Year-Old Virgin

_"A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity."  
\- Germaine Greer_   
  


* * *

  


  


Six o'clock Sunday means Remedial Potions.

The ingredients Harry Potter is told to sort through smell strongly of mould and mud and medicine. They are mushrooms, dry and small, and in the flickering light from the fireplace they glow, orange and puce. Like coals, only not. When touched, they swell up and their stalks lengthen, thrusting into his palm, as blunt and crude as any teenage boy's fevered imagination. To make matters worse, some are infected with a hint of green at their flaring tips, and it is precisely this infection which Harry must attend to.

_The boy's dithering,_  Snape thinks,  _as I knew he would._  Annoyed by the insulting transparency of this ploy, he growls "Get on with it." He sneers as he adds, ever-so-dryly, "Or are you so enamoured of my company that you can't bear to tear yourself away?"

"Hmph." Harry grips a knife tighter in his wand hand. The handle is unfamiliar and therefore awkward. He trims a cluster of mushrooms, removing green specks from each one. They're unnaturally warm, for mushrooms. Awfully resilient too: slimy and springy and stiff. By now it's become a challenge:  _Locate. Eradicate._  Just like the shiny black beetles which remind him of Snape's eyes, only these are fungal growths, nasty things (Snapetacularly nasty) used for awful brews (Snapealiciously awful), and they're probably pure poison, bitter as bile on the tongue as they go down. Bitter as Snape's insults.

"I'm  _hardly..._ " His mouth curves into a smirk as he wraps his hand around another mushroom. "...'enamoured', Professor. Mind you, what with all these weekly lessons,  _you_  must be." Harry lifts his head. It's not a dare. It's not. It's just a question that slips out, merely an innocent comment. "Bet you missed me."

" _Missed_  you? Insolent guttersnipe!" Snape hisses, but though he bares his teeth in a snarl, to him it feels almost like an elated grin. The truth is, it's fun to torment the brat. An immature pleasure, to be sure, but Snape has been trapped among juveniles for too long, locked away from more adult pastimes. So he takes his joys where he can, and right now they revolve around Harry: watching him fume and posture, powerless. "Can you think of  _no_  other reason for this lesson?" Snape inquires sweetly. His mild tone is an immense, saintly sacrifice: the latest of many, for the brat's sake. "Such as your failing grades, for example?"

Harry slouches over his work. It's cold in the dungeons: cold and quiet as always. "Funny how I'm only failing  _your_  class," he mumbles. Once again he regrets letting Hermione talk him into going back for his eighth year and his NEWTs. Especially this particular NEWT. Especially in this particular dungeon, with this particular potions master.

Yet no matter how much he might hate his decision, Harry is still here, salvaging mushrooms from slimy green mould.  _Why is it a million times easier to take instructions from Snape's book than from the greasy git himself?_  Harry knows he probably shouldn't speak his mind, but it's too easy, especially after the edge of the knife slips and almost nicks Harry's finger. And wouldn't that be fitting? Snape, the stubborn sod, did far more than his fair share of bleeding: all over Harry in the Shrieking Shack, once he'd run out of insults. And then he oozed white and foggy mind fluids for good measure, and nearly kicked the bucket right there and then.  _Hell of a day that was! Not like now. Now, I suppose it's "Ten points from Gryffindor, Potter," and business as usual. Not even a thanks for saving his life. Or for acquitting him in front of the Wizengamot or anything else. Git!_  "First you fail me, then you tutor me?" Harry huffs. "That's bloody convenient, innit?"

Snape doesn't bother hiding an exasperated scowl.  _Students! They're always the same. Always blaming their teachers for the results of their own ignorance, incompetence, or laziness. Or all of the above._  " _I'm_  not failing you, Potter; I assure you, you're doing that all by yourself." Snape sets aside his quill, abandoning the pretence of marking papers he'd long finished, and rises to his feet. "And as for tutoring - which I'm doing out of the goodness of my heart - why  _is_  it that you're doing so badly now, when you did so well in sixth year..." he takes one step closer, and springs the trap his previous words had set, "... with  _my_  notes?" 

"Maybe it's 'cause your notes didn't stare at me like I'm an idiot every chance they got. And they didn't call anyone an imbecile. Much," Harry grumbles, gathering the pile of glowing fungal growths but, as always, occupied by more than one task, he runs out of steam, mid-rant. "Your notes were actually helpful. They  _explained_  things!" He frowns, waving at the worktable, slippery mushrooms in hand. "Why am I doing all this if you won't even tell me what it's  _for?_ " He stares at Snape creeping from the shadows, and that's another annoying thing Snape's notes didn't do: creep from the shadows and linger ominously right  _there_.

"I 'explain' in class!" Snape cries, outraged at the slur on his teaching style. "If that had any effect, you wouldn't be here!" He swallows with difficulty, and one hand drifts up instinctively to brush fingertips over the raised ridges of tissue; the blasted scar still hurts when he raises his voice. In quieter tones tinged with deepest doubt he adds, "Since you insist, Potter. Those are Puck's Pestles, which,  _if_  cleaned of all traces of mould, can be used in... ?" he allows the sentence to trail off into a question.  _Serve the little sod right._

_How am I supposed to know?_  Harry wonders.  _Snape never told us about them before! I'm sure he didn't!_  The last few lessons barely included normal words, the ingredient names were so bloody long and Latin that you couldn't get through saying them without a yawn in the middle! "Oh I s'pose they're good for you in all sorts of ways," he guesses. "In small medicinal doses. Though I reckon too much at once wouldn't be good."  _There, that covered everything. Not bad for off the cuff. Now better distract him with something else._  He puts on a brave grin. "Unless you've decided to redecorate the dungeon in mushrooms 'n' mould." He eyes the heap of fungi on the workbench. "Can't say it's an improvement."

Snape allows himself a snort at the blatantly obvious bullshit.  _That "answer" described everything on my shelves. Including water!_  "Nice try," he lies. "The Pestles are for Hagrid's Hippogriffs. The stallions in particular. They encourage... breeding."

"Breeding," Harry echoes and gives the hard, slick mushroom in his hand a blunt stare and a dubious sigh. "Honestly." He shakes his head. "Who'd guess that sort of thing?"

"You're not supposed to  _guess_ ," Snape parries repressively, "That's precisely the point! And as for the mould," Snape smirks, "it's essential that  _you're_  the one who removes it, as it can indeed be toxic..." he inserts a strategic pause, "... to others."

Toxic or not, it's bloody irritating. Harry growls, "To 'others'? As in 'not me'? So does being the so-called 'Saviour of the Wizarding World' save me from food poisoning too?"

"As I was saying," Snape eyerolls, overriding Harry's outburst with an especially wicked twist of lip, "It's quite. Toxic. To non-virgins."

"Non-what?!" That particular bit of information leaves Harry gulping as he stares at his bundle of up-thrust fungal stalks, picturing them in a whole new light. Not to mention picturing Snape in a whole new light, or shadow. "I-I mean, I've got it! You don't need to explain  _that_  to me! I know." Harry blinks, aware of the heat on his face, of the smirk on Snape's, of the full extent of the situation he'd found himself in this evening.  _It's official, Snape's a pervert!_

"Are you quite all right, Mis-ter Potter?" There's a rumble rising in that low voice as Snape delivers his question, and Harry can  _feel_  it boiling up in his blood. It's like a sound a big cat would make, deep and reverberating and Snapeishly ambiguous: maybe a growl, maybe a purr.

"Never better," Harry parries dryly. "Why wouldn't I be? After all, I'm  _only_  pruning your toxic virgin mould."

* * *

Harry can't quite bring himself to touch the mushrooms now. Not with his knife, anyway. They seem too... enthusiastic in their swelled-up-and-ready-to-thrust-through-fertile-soil state, and he'd rather keep them unsuspecting of their fate as Carriers of Deadly Poisons awhile longer.  _Whatever Snape thinks a 'virgin' means, it's probably near-medieval and maidenly, the kind chained to a rock and left as dragon bait! But what if this mould is partially toxic to those who... tried things out? Or learned how things are done? Or may or may not have... practiced, on their own, after learning how things are done... Yes, learning! I was just learning! How bloody careless of Snape not to even think about **that**! At least a warning would've been nice._

Harry considers it all, with a shiver down his spine and a narrow-eyed stare at Snape.  _Now that Neville isn't afraid of him, the snarly sod's just saved up all that spine-chilling sadism for the rest of us._  Then he gulps as he stops himself from wiping his hands on his trousers. "Is it fatal?" he croaks.  _And even if it's not, it probably shouldn't be rubbed anywhere near my bits, or my arse. Definitely not anywhere else either._

"On occasion."

"Oh," Harry says. Snape even looks pleased, smug, to deliver the news, the bastard. "H-have you got enough antidote on hand?" Harry gathers shreds of prudence to ask. "Just in case, I'm - um - you know. Not what you expected?"

"Just in  _case_?" Snape echoes, unable to believe his ears, barely able to stop himself from laughing out loud. "I would have thought even  _you_  would have noticed it, Mis-ter Potter, if you'd ever actually had sex!" 

"Didn't I say just in case?" Harry snaps. "Like the case when your mould's definition of 'virgin' is off, or something." He bites his lip. "Like um, does it accept snogging and s-such, for example, and HEY!" He gives Snape an indignant stare because the evil git actually eyerolled! "I  _would_  notice sex! I do!" The words escape in near-outrage. "It's sex!"

If Snape was a moral man, he really wouldn't pry any further, but he has both an ironclad alibi for once (potential toxic effects), and about as much morality as you'd expect from an average spy, or even from an extraordinary spy. So he adds, "Just what  _have_  you been up to?" Snape always had a bit of a tendency to torture himself, and the mental image of Harry with either of his tentmates - or both of them - certainly qualifies as torment, of the tantalising variety.  _I've often wondered if they were **camp** ing in more than one sense._

Harry hmphs. "At the moment I've been busy tending to your toxic fungi, and not having nearly enough fun elsewhere, which is apparently a life-saving thing, and that's really rather sad, especially for my age..." There has to be something to say to distract Harry from being awkwardly ever-so-not-embarrassed at his own state of virginity. Something to lighten the even-nastier-than-normal scowl that appears on Snape's face at Harry's last words. "So, um, I see why you needed help with these mushrooms. Since they're... er, toxic. And you're... not a - not immune to them. Like me. Obviously."

"Enough chatter," Snape sneers. "I do hope you learned your lesson. From now on, I trust you'll follow every precaution when handling dangerous substances."

"'Course! I always do," Harry gives Snape a defiant glare. "That's just not  _fair_! It's not my fault they're too toxic for you to cope with. What did  _you_  do to make that happen, anyway?"

_Oh, so he's going to be like that, is he?_  Snape had so hoped that the prospect of discussing virginity - or lack thereof - would send Harry screaming from the room, but obviously Snape had reckoned without that ridiculous Gryffindor stubbornness. _Very well. Time to raise the stakes._

"I fucked." 

Snape says this in his smokiest drawl, with the safest, impeccably neutral stare down his nose. "After all, unlike some, I've been a grown man for years, and I've had years to perfect my technique," he adds casually, and so what if it's... an embellishment of the truth? If he were anything less than a superb actor, he wouldn't be alive and having far too much fun watching all the colours Harry's face can turn.

"Your hand doesn't count as fucking!" escapes Harry's mouth before he can stop it.  _It had to have been his hand!_  The thought of Snape with someone - anyone! - is enough to break Harry's brain, so instead he glances suspiciously at the mushrooms, adding as quietly as if the mould on their round fleshy caps can hear him ask the question. "... does it?"  _If it does I'm so screwed._

"Oh, I could make my hand count," Snape purrs, raising the appendage in question and turning the fingers into a point, like a serpent's head. 

Harry blinks, and for a long and painful moment stares at Snape's hand, to gather clues of just what exactly Snape is talking about now, and it's just like all Snape's other lessons: long, frustrating, bewildering, and no sense whatsoever. Only Harry's quite sure that this time Snape is using some form of English instead of the Latin he uses in class, when the man purrs "Or haven't you ever heard of fisting, mm?" 

It's definitely English. At least the words sound all English. And they have to mean something. Strung together like that, they usually do. Except Harry blinks and still tries to comprehend what exactly was said to him. He discovers it's quite hard... _difficult_  to do so with a phallic mushroom twitching in his hand, forcing his thoughts to go pear-shaped and heading one obvious way toward disaster.

"But. That's just... the wrong way to go about it," Harry scoffs, trying to cover for his guessing. "Your hand isn't even in a fist," he points out at last, ever-so-helpfully, which seems like the safest strategy to take. 

_Oh, this **will**  be good,_ Snape thinks. "Of course not," he replies silkily. "If I made a fist, it wouldn't  _fit_."

"Fit  _where_?" The words pop out by reflex, even as a dreadful suspicion tells Harry that he probably doesn't want to know and - "Oh."  _How did we get from remedial potions to this?_  Harry stares at the specimens - which apparently put the fun into fungi - then he stares at Snape, seeing Snape's hand in a new light, just like the ingredients before it, and then he stares some more, very much  _not_  deliberately, evaluating and sizing up the length of Snape's spidery fingers, the width across his bony knuckles, and wondering, wondering, wondering about the details he so does  _not_  want to know!

"Wow," he exhales and then places himself firmly between the mould and Snape, because if anything could make fungi pounce six feet up and attack with pure toxin, it would surely be Snape's confession of utter perversion and intense ex-virginity. Non-virginity. ANTI-virginity!

"Um." Harry licks dry lips and desperately tries not to sound so bloody impressed. He really isn't, and even if he is impressed, just a little bit, he really shouldn't be! At all. "OK. I believe you. I'd best put these away then. Before you get exposed. T-to the toxin. I'd rather not have you dying on me. Er. Again." 

Watching the moment when the knut drops is every bit as fascinating as Snape thought it would be, even though Harry's actual reaction is a most surprising one. From anyone else,  _to_  anyone else, Snape would call it interest, possibly even protectiveness. Luckily for them both, Snape is well aware of who they are, so he settles for a tilt of his head, and an only mildly sarcastic murmur of "Much obliged," to reinforce the lesson learned.

As Harry handles the mushrooms, it feels slightly as if he's protecting their innocent sensibilities from toxic exposure to Snape, and not the other way around.

_The greasy's sod's mind is worse than toxic goo,_  Harry tells himself.  _It oozes and insinuates itself and you can't get it out of your head once it gets on your nerves. And then it's stuck for good. And so am I!_

He finds himself contemplating the dimensions and shape of Snape's hand so intently, he walks into a door on the way up from the dungeons.  _No way it'd fit!_  he reassures himself.  _He's just being sarcastic. Just having me on. Pulling my leg. Er, not that sort of leg, just my **leg**  leg! He's good at yanking my, um, chain. He always was! Too bloody good!_

* * *

Before next Sunday, Harry finds himself researching 'fisting'. 

As research topics go, it's far more interesting than fungi and their Latin names. Besides, the Restricted Section has a wealth of material, if you know where to look. 

Harry knows. He's no Hermione Granger, but what teenage wizard doesn't have an eye for trouble and temptation? Even if it's hidden in really old books with really dry-looking titles and all: on the top shelves, out of the way of sneaking, impressionable lower-years.

He reaches up, past shelves full of dry and potentially deadly books, and grabs some promising titles:  _The Genital Grimoire_ , _The Mana Sutra_ ,  _Naughty Nostrums for Saucy Sorcerors_ , among others. The stack of books in his grasp, he settles down in an especially dark corner between two bookshelves to study the topic at hand. 

As far as research goes, it's really... stimulating. Soon Harry has to move the book he's reading onto his knees: the weight in his lap goes from intriguing to repressive to almost-painful, as his cock hardens. He looks around, and listens intently, and when he sees and hears nothing, he's just in the process of reaching for his zipper when he hears a throat being cleared.

The sound is a bass growl that could only come from one throat in the whole castle. A throat that, Harry can remember all too vividly, is knotted with thick red scarring, under those high white collars.

Harry's own throat has gone dry, and he's intensely grateful for the way the book balancing on his knees is hiding his groin from the stealthy black scarecrow of a man looming over him. "H-hello, Professor," for the life of him, he can't help the catch in his breathing, "M'just studying." He slams the book shut, hopefully too fast for Snape to recognise the wand-movement diagrams for Titillando Prostatis and Erecto Maximus. The hasty movement raises a cloud of dust, and Harry's never been happier to indulge himself in a coughing fit. It buys him time to gather his scattered wits.

One spindly arm swoops down and snatches the book out of Harry's hands, and Harry has to scramble for another from the stack beside him, in a last-ditch effort to hide his tented trousers. He stares up anxiously at Snape, but relaxes a little when Snape ignores him in favour of flipping impatiently through the book. Snape holds it open as he shoves it back at Harry, a spidery finger tapping the page. "From there, to the bottom of page six-sixty-nine." Harry breathes a sigh of relief at having managed to hide his hard-on, and is about to start reading when Snape bends abruptly and whispers into his ear, "By the way, Potter..." Snape pauses meaningfully and Harry just knows that stare is trained on his groin, pointed enough that it's like Snape can see through the books in Harry's lap. " _Do_  wait until you're out of the library to take care of  _that_. Madam Pince's wards take an exceedingly dim view of ejaculate."

Harry only gulps and hopes he's not blushing and watches until Snape's gone from the library; only then does he look down at the paragraph Snape pointed out.

>   
> "Fisting may perhaps be the ultimate challenge to purveyors of penetration during sexual intimacy. Although frequent unsatisfactory attempts at fisting occur among impatient beginners, the procedure, if performed properly while well-prepared, will be extremely rewarding to the point of ..."  
> 

In the margin, beside the words underlined by hand, is a hastily scrawled note: 

>   
> **Well of COURSE it'll be unsatisfactory if they use the pathetic excuse for a lube formula on p131! Needs 15% more sodium alginate!**  
> 

_Wait,_  Harry thinks,  _I know that handwriting! No wonder he knew where to look... wow!_  Harry stares at the page and continues reading, even though he has to balance the book carefully on his knees, and pause every so often to wipe the fog off his glasses.

There is no doubt in Harry's mind who wrote that margin note. The Half-blood Prince's handwriting stands out in Harry's memory, as obvious as the stirring of Harry's cock at the thought of teenaged Snape, with this very book. Harry has to adjust himself in his trousers as he pictures it: Snape, when he was Harry's age, trying out every devious, daring and delicious suggestion in this book and then coming back to catalogue and critique and improve on the most worthy ones on the margins.

_Has he tried them all himself? Was it alone or with...? Not Mum! Ugh. Don't even think about that. Definitely alone. He had to have tried it alone at some point._  The thought of younger Snape experimenting as a student, in the privacy of his dormitory, in the privacy of his mind, is fascinating to Harry.  _Just what did he do to test out that lube?_  The Snape Harry knows is very thorough. He wouldn't leave a page unturned, a statement unconfirmed, by his own hand.

Harry keeps on reading. It's personal now. It's important. There are so many questions in Harry's mind. He simply has to know! Everything!

* * *

"You do know," Harry calmly informs Snape later, during their next session, "even if you self-fist, it's just the same as wanking, so it won't count. Something else you did must've triggered the toxicity of the mushrooms," he states, trying his best to sound as dry and disinterested as Snape during a lecture.

Harry's behaviour in class markedly improved that week, as Snape rather suspected it might.  _There's nothing like sex, even a brief discussion of it, to get a teenager's attention._  Snape spent the week vastly amused by Harry's new attentiveness in class, and he's even more amused now by Harry's attempt at both a scholarly tone and a veiled insult (the implication that all of Snape's experience has been solitary).

"Of course it was something else," Snape agrees coolly, just to show Harry how the lecturing tone is done. Snape doesn't give him any more clues; it will be interesting to see just how far Harry's willing to push things.

"Now, if you fist someone else, who is a virgin, it'd probably mean that they wouldn't be one any more, but where would that leave you?" Harry carries on.  _Research is fun!_

Snape snorts. "Fascinating though such questions are, this is a class on Remedial Potions." Some perverse impulse makes him add, "However, if you believe you require private tuition in other topics..." He lets the sentence trail off, in a tacit - and therefore safely deniable - offer.

"Other  _topics_?" Harry perks up. Snape is rather fascinating as long as he doesn't teach Harry Potions. "Not Occlumency, I hope." He peers up from the pile of ginseng on the worktable. It looks a bit like miniature mandrakes, scrubbed, scalped, and shrunk. And now to be quartered and strung up above the cauldron. "What and when?"

"Anything you feel you need to learn," Snape parries easily, "and, of course, anything which you feel I have the expertise to teach."

"Anything?" It's tempting. It makes Harry think back on anything he might have wanted to ask Snape in the past. Anything he might have wanted to know. Anything he might have... wanted. Snape's hands are currently folded behind his back and Harry can't see his fingers, poised like a striking cobra... and why are the dungeons suddenly warm? Dungeons are never warm. Ever.

"Is it true that you can fly?" Harry murmurs a question then, anything to avoid asking for something entirely different.

"I gave you the memory." The memory of leaving the castle to the Heads of House. "Did you think that my memories lied?" Snape's recollection of it is raw: the ignominy of fleeing, the shame of pretending that they had out-fought him, and the maddening frustration of being unable to strike a single blow in his own defense, when he could have wiped Hogwarts' floors with the whole pack of arrogant sods.

"Yup," Harry confirms, seemingly oblivious to Snape's scowl. He stands up, any attention to Snape's expression overshadowed by his own current predicament: he is awkward and stiff as hell. He doesn't let it stop him. "We can start with flying, perhaps." Harry pauses and meets Snape's stare. "Flying first." He tries his best to keep his tone casual. "Then fisting."

Snape's eyes widen slightly, just for an instant. If Harry hadn't spent years watching the secretive sod, he would've missed it for sure.

_Got you!_  Harry feels smug. Who wouldn't be?

_Cheeky little bugger!_  Snape glares at Harry's smirk before recovering his composure. "Really?" he drawls. " _ **I**_  find the usual course of events is: fucking, then perhaps fisting, both leading to 'flying'."

Harry hasn't been struck dead by a hex yet for his impudence, so he reckons he's come out ahead. All things considered, it's better than Cho crying on him after a kiss, or awkward fumbling with Ginny. "I'm game," he nods, feeling his ears burning, and trying to will them not to. "So when do you want me? To come? Er, come back?"

_Of course, this is just more Gryffindor bravado; he won't really turn up,_  Snape knows, even as he shrugs nonchalantly and says "Next Saturday night will do. Unless, of course," he smirks, "you have Other Plans."

_Whoa!_  Harry thinks,  _I guess it's true what they say about the quiet ones in the dungeons. He may have something to teach me after all._  "No plans," he offers bravely. "'Cept Sunday lessons with you, but that's the next day, and they aren't even early."  _Will it take all night?_  Harry wills away the rush of heat to his face but can't do much about the heat in his groin. "Um, yes. None." Harry steps back, and tries his best to look casual. Not too casual, though! "I'll be there," he promises. 

He pushes his glasses up his nose, wipes sweaty palms on the sides of his trousers and finds his way out. Only then does he beam widely and leap up the dungeon staircase two stairs at a time.

_Yes! Unbelievable! YES!_

And then comes the predicament of waiting. Unfortunately, Saturdays arrive very slowly, when you're looking forward to them from the vantage point of a Sunday.

* * *

On Saturday night, Snape tends to the cluster of glowing mushrooms alone, bare-handed and just as unaffected by their toxin at near-forty as he was at fourteen. He tells himself sternly for the hundredth time that he expects nothing from Harry. He tells himself that he is not at all disappointed, or cross. Unfortunately, Snape is well aware that he is an habitual liar.

On Saturday night, Harry makes the journey to Snape's classrooms, then instead of knocking, hits his head against the door in frustration and runs for Snape's office instead. They hadn't really agreed on a set time, but Harry figures that 'night' is probably 'after it's dark', and watches the sunset till it burns out.

_What do you bring to Remedial Fucking Lessons? Probably not notes._  Harry doesn't have much time to wonder what else, because the door swings open.

Inside, the fire has been lit long enough that it has burned low in the grate, and the flickering embers and a couple of scattered candles are the room's only light. Snape has banished the desk where he does his marking, but has kept the armchair. He's seated in it, swathed from head to toe in a cloak. With the hearth behind him, Snape's shadow covers most of the room. Harry feels as if he's nothing but a shadow himself, vanishing into the doorway's dimness, swallowed up by the dungeon gloom.

Snape waves the door closed behind Harry, follows up with locking and silencing charms. "As with all courses of instruction," he murmurs coolly, "I must first assess the current state of your knowledge of the topic."

_I'm in trouble,_  thinks Harry.  _And why does it feel suddenly like an examination? Snape's too good at setting that particular tone, even when he's hovering like a great bat._  He even seems bigger than usual, darker than usual, with a trailing cloak that's more dramatic than his normal trailing sleeves, his long black hair forming cavernous shadows around his face. The black folds of the cloak drape over Snape's shoulders and upper arms, like a beaky bird of prey puffing out feathers in a threat display, black wings fanning wide.

Harry blinks, getting used to the dark. He's just about to take his glasses off - they keep fogging up and need good and thorough rubbing with a sleeve - but then...

For the first time Snape moves in the armchair and allows his cloak to shift. 

Harry stares.

Snape is barefoot. It's so odd to see him that way, to look down and, instead of black leather boots, see bare white feet with long thin toes, and bony, blue-veined arches. Harry looks up higher.

A glimpse of white among all the shadow can be nothing but skin. A pale triangle of skin, from thigh to knee as the cloak's hem parts. His stare shifts then: to notice that there are no sleeves at pale wrists as Snape pushes up the fabric at his forearms, just as there is no buttoned-up, crisp collar that usually covers the thick scar at Snape's neck. 

And then, with an odd intake of breath, Snape draws the cloak partially open.

At that moment all Harry knows is that Snape's cloak parts from collar to hem with no annoying pause for undoing buttons, and underneath... WHOA! Harry pushes his glasses back over his eyes faster than you can say "Quidditch," and he realises then that his lens-unaided vision didn't lie: Snape is there - right  _here_  in front of Harry - stark naked, save for the cape, every soft dark concealing fold of it draping his form, and Harry had never wished this much for an even more revealing cut.

Harry forgets to breathe. Snape doesn't look like a bird of prey anymore, perched in his seat. Not threatening. Not looming. Not when Harry's standing so close and staring down at him.

Snape's hair frames his face like a hood, but the shadows can't hide his intent, glittering stare. Then he twists bony shoulders, flinging the cloak wide, and the folds drape over the sides of the armchair with a whisperrustle, like feathers, like shed snakeskin. The body beneath is angular: all harsh juts and arches of bone, starkly clear under skin that's so pale it's obvious Snape has never known anything as open and shameless as full sun.

Not that Snape's got anything to be ashamed of. Harry's mouth goes dry as he stares down at Snape's cock. There seems so much of it: it juts from a patch of black, coarse hair, red and thick and utterly unlike the rest of Snape's white, wiry body. Harry's heartbeat is hammering in his ears, so loud it feels like Snape must be able to hear it.

Then even that sound is drowned out by Snape's bass rumble, slow and smoky: pure aural sex.

"Show me what you know."

Harry stumbles forward. He's nowhere near naked enough for this. He's far too clumsy. His face is hot and his palms are sweaty and his already-aroused cock is hard enough to hurt. He's biting his lip and feels the pressure of his own teeth against skin but it's secondary to what he's about to do: another step, and another, toward a beaky face and a dark stare and an outreached hand, forearm wiry and unmarred by tattoos. Harry's focus shifts. Angular knees, pale thighs, and an upthrust cock, heavy and full and he can't help staring.

This might actually work better if he were on his knees -  _Ohgod! On my knees in front of Snape - now that's a thought!_

"I know enough," he finally gasps. "Should I...?"

One eyebrow lifts, and there's something more impatient than usual about its twist. "I said 'show me', not 'ask me'."

_Oh,_  Harry realises.  _He **wants**  me to do things. To him. I can touch him! Wow!_ Harry looks down at the seated man in front of him and suddenly on a whim, licks his lips and presses them against Snape's thin mouth.

Kissing: yes, that much Harry has definitely done before. Not enough to be an expert at it, but he'd done it several times, so even if he's not really an expert, it's close enough.

It's just a peck on the lips. An excuse to get closer. To allow Harry to step in between parted knees and into the circle of arms and lean down against this pale form, to get nearer to Snape, to be able to reach for what he  _really_  wants.  _Show me,_ Snape said. Well, Harry's never been one to hold back. He reaches out, instinctive as grasping a broomstick, and curls his hand around Snape's cock. His grip on his prize is as persistent as if he's finally found the perfect pestle. 

Only then does he grin up, from his newly-claimed place between Snape's legs. "Like this?"

_Bold as brass, the boy is - and I **really**  should stop thinking of him as a boy, especially when he's holding me  **there!**_  Snape sighs and his eyes grow heavy-lidded.  _Bold as brass and a lot warmer,_  Snape thinks, feeling his cock - kept at half-mast by the nervousness he's otherwise been able to hide - lengthen and harden in Harry's hand. 

_Closer._  Harry lunges for Snape, all impetuousness, enough to almost make up for his obvious lack of skill. Snape is sure he can do a lot better than this. He takes control of the kiss with no more than the pressure of lips and tongue: gentle at first, then he stokes the fires with a slow, slick push of his tongue into Harry's mouth. The slide of his tongue is in sync with the slight lift of his hips, pushing his cock further into Harry's fist: a reminder that this isn't just about something as simple as kissing.

Harry suspects that with Snape it would never be as simple as kissing. And that's a good thing. A very good thing.

_A mouth and a cock. Two things at once. Right!_  They are manageable enough if Harry concentrates, but not so easy if the concentration this challenge requires is stripped from him by the slick licking of Snape's devious tongue. Focusing is hard - extremely so, in more ways than one - so Harry lets Snape lead, at least in one of the tasks at hand, and directs his attention to the other pleasantly hard thing in his fist he needs to focus on.  _This is Snape. I'm wanking Snape!_  The panicky litany in his head suddenly gives way to  _Mmm,_  and kissing is suddenly as easy as giving in and breathing, as he lets his hand try out a familiar rhythm backwards, for once, facing someone else instead of taking care of himself.

As Snape expected, the pace of Harry's hand on him is too quick: a teenager's urgency, trained by the need for speed in the crowded confines of a dorm, used to getting by with no better lube than spit, sweat, and precome. Even Snape's own sessions - solitary though they were - had far more finesse. Though now Snape has to admit that finesse, like fame, isn't everything. Sooner than Snape would have believed possible, Harry's enthusiasm has him rock hard and seeping. It takes all of Snape's willpower to remember that coming now would just reward poor technique. It takes a real effort of will to twist backwards out of Harry's grasp, to silently cast Lubricus. But it's no effort at all to dip slick fingertips into Harry's flies, no effort to stroke teasingly at the hard flesh.

Another twist, this time of Snape's neck, frees his mouth and he hisses "Slower." He removes his hands and nods at Harry's tented crotch. "Allow me to demonstrate." 

Harry thinks he might have started a bit slower than usual, but he's just starting to get into it, that is until Snape pulls back and hisses "Slower."  _Wait. Slower is good? Oh._  Well, that isn't something Harry's used to, but then Snape touches him, and suddenly 'slower' is definitely good, in fact, 'slower' is fucking brilliant, as is anything Snape does, Harry knows that now:  _As long as I, as long as he..._  "Don't stop!" he cries and thrusts into Snape's warm hand. "Yeahh. Like that."  _Just like that!_

But of course Snape does stop.  _This will be no furtive schoolboy fumble. One of us, at least, has higher standards than that._ "Strip," he hisses.  _After all, turnabout is fair play._

_...Yess, like that, harder and slow and more - No!_  Harry shoves forward, but the contrary sod pulls back.  _Damn! Should've known he'd be as uncooperative as ever._  He listens to the words and tries to comprehend them with his very uncooperative mind.  _Strip? What for? He's got my important bits out already!_  Harry tugs at the fastenings of his robe, shrugs it off, along with the shirt and trousers.  _Why did I ever think it was a good idea to wear so many clothes in a dungeon? It's not even cold here, for once._  He toes off his boots last, risking tripping over the rest of his kit, tangled around his ankles. "Should've worn a cloak," he mumbles, taking note of proper gear. "Cloaks are brilliant!"

Snape is surprised by the topic, astonished by the tone of camaraderie, and positively startled by the chuckle that escapes him in reply. "And risk giving any passerby an eyeful or a coronary? No, best do as you did,"  _just as you did._  "But next time, I trust you won't wait to be told to disrobe, once you are here."

Harry is pretty much pants at taking orders, but this particular order he wants to take again and again and again. Even, especially, if it means getting rid of his pants. "I don't mind," he beams. "Tell me to strip again."

Snape's eyebrow lifts.

"I like how you say it. It's sexy!"

Snape stares.  _Surely I misheard._

_Sexy._

Now  _that's_  a word Snape won't ever allow himself to use on Harry. It's too openly admiring, despite how true it is. Snape has never thought that honesty is the best policy, and it certainly wouldn't do to let Harry believe he has any sort of upper hand.

But there's no harm in admiring Harry inside his head, so Snape looks his fill. Harry's taut, compact body is every bit as beautifully developed as he'd imagined. The adult thatch of hair at chest and groin is a surprise, and not an unpleasant one. Certainly 'unpleasant' is the last word Snape would use for that cock, full and flushed and craning eagerly for Snape's touch.

So, graciously, Snape bestows it, watching Harry closely for his reactions, learning as he goes, which touch pleases Harry the most. So that he can use the knowledge to tease Harry, to draw his pleasure out as long as possible, and longer yet.

_Whatever I said last must've been really good if **this**  is the reaction it gets,_ Harry thinks, already dazed with pleasure. Snape touches him again and this time shows no signs of stopping. Not that he stops being a teasing sod, either. Oh no! But somewhere between all the stern-hard exterior and the teasing one, Harry finds something new. Snape handles him with such interest, curiosity, care, as if Harry is a rare ingredient laid out on Snape's worktable for a very thorough and lengthy perusal.  _Unicorn horn!_  A mental image flashes, of Snape fondling a pearly horn lasciviously, and Harry is caught between a splutter of laughter at the thought and a gasp at the slow, spiralling twist of Snape's grip. It's so good and so bad, wonderful and unfair, because it's so bloody fantastic and it's too damn slow and not quite enough but so close! He flails then, fumbling, grabbing Snape's wrist, not knowing what else to do. Snape doesn't seem to like talking, so Harry leans forward, and chokes back the moan that's about to burst from him the only way he can: by claiming Snape's lips in another kiss. Even more amazing, Snape doesn't hex him for presumption, doesn't even protest: not so much as a grumble. Harry doesn't know what else to do to show just how much he needs: something, exactly this, and more of it!

_Of course it's too much to expect a young man to just submit passively to anything - even pleasure - at another's pace, instead of his own._  Snape suspected all along that it'd be up to him to demonstrate to Harry that pleasure anticipated is pleasure doubled. So Snape learns to play the instrument of Harry's body and varies the tempo of his bliss: speeding to the brink until Harry's gasping and moaning into his mouth, shaking in his arms, and then Snape backs off, slows the pace, listens to the music of Harry's cries shift to whining, wordless pleas: to finish this, finish him. But Snape is not so cruel as to deny Harry a minute of delight. Nor is he so merciful as to cut short this lesson in the needs of Harry's body, and in Snape's mastery over them.

Harry gasps and pants. The stubborn sod seems... not so irate just now, interested, even pleased.  _With me?_  Harry wonders, before that cruel, wonderful hand keeps him from thinking anymore. His thoughts grow heavy and melt into liquid relaxation, warm and white, leaving his head empty of anything but need, leaving his balls filling, full. All his remaining thoughts travel down his body, following the heat, because his mind certainly contains little more than 'want' and 'this' and then, finally, he feels himself arching, thrusting so hard and fast and Snape's hand is so good and just right and  _there YES now!_

Harry tenses and holds back, but it's like holding back his melted brains from blowing out in that single brilliant moment. 

All control has its limits: even Snape's, especially Harry's. At last, Harry shudders, pours out into Snape's hands. He slumps into Snape's arms, sweaty and panting and, for the moment, satisfied.  _I can still think,_  Harry realises, as his body sags against Snape's supporting embrace.  _Just barely..._

Harry is held up by one warm hand: curled on his cock, gently stroking the last ooze from his sensitised shaft, and by one wiry arm: snaking around his chest, supporting his weight. Snape bends his head to murmur into Harry's ear " _Now_  do you think my hand counts as 'sex'?"

The new spasms taking over Harry's body are not orgasm, not any more: they're laughter and they feel just as good building up like that, slow and sated.

"Dunno," he pants. "But I'd best use gloves from now on when handling your mushrooms."

Harry's breathless laughter rocks them both, and perhaps there are some chuckles of Snape's, somewhere in the mix. "No dragonhide gloves on  _my_  'mushroom'!" he presents the ultimatum. "Doeskin, if you must."

" _Doe_ skin?" Harry raises his eyebrow. "And you summon your Patronus with that mouth?"

Snape blinks, momentarily. "You will treat the matter with the secrecy it deserves. Or lose that tongue."

Harry beams and accepts the challenge.

* * *

Harry is still beaming as he falls asleep, belatedly, back in his tower.  _Bloody brilliant, he thinks. And I've got lessons with him tomorrow too! I can't believe my luck! Things like this just don't happen! No matter now much Felix Felicis you drink. Or bathe in._

Not that Harry ever considered that, but diving into a cauldronful of Felix Felicis suddenly sounds rather tempting, especially if Snape was added into the pot.  _Or into the Potter,_  Harry thought with an anticipatory grin.

Sunday morning passes as slow as treacle, as Harry tries not to think about either last night or tonight, which is impossible, and his thoughts inevitably end up being sandwiched between the two events and melting into liquid heat.

"I missed you all night!" Harry exclaims as soon as he enters Snape's classroom. His first impulse is to lunge at Snape and start rubbing against him, preferably skin-on-skin, including all the fun bits, but Harry manfully restrains himself and opts for the semi-civil greeting.

It takes all Snape's experience as a spy to hide his impulse to flat-out stare at Harry.  _Does he really expect me to believe that utter rot? He 'missed me'? Hah! High time I show him that there are consequences for lying to me._  Snape fixes a Classification XXXX sneer on his face - not quite strong enough to make Hufflepuffs cry, but getting there - and hisses, "Don't insult my intelligence, Potter." With a few peremptory flicks, he opens his flies and reaches in, jutting his hips forward threateningly and stroking at the cock thus revealed, like a Beater slaps the bat into his palm before belting the Bludger straight at his opponent's head. "Kneel," he rumbles.

Harry stares at him.

_The moment of truth,_  Snape thinks grimly.  _This will put a stop to this nonsense for good, one way or the other. Either he'll run - as he bloody should have long ago - ...or._  Snape draws a long breath, hating the way nerves make it judder in his lungs, hating the way hope surges in him, despite a lifetime of bitter experience.  _Or he'll stay. Because this is what he truly wants._

Harry doesn't move. "Oh," he exhales. "OK." Snape can see the tension in his throat, as any other answer is swallowed back, and then, just like that, it happens. 

In the second it takes to draw the obvious conclusion, Harry's knees nearly give out right there and then, but he manages to take a few shaky steps forward and only then drops down in front of Snape's parted flies, a front-and-centre view of the show. Yesterday's smile returns to his face, slow and reverent. "Hi!" he breathes, and judging by the direction of his gaze, the warm, breathy greeting is directed at the pointy bits of Snape's anatomy, more than at Snape himself.

But he looks up then, eyes green and wide and glistening in the shadow of Snape's looming figure and his stare is just as warm, meeting Snape's eye, as he leans forward and rubs his cheek against the tip of Snape's cock, in a catlike claiming gesture. 

Snape fights back a half-outraged, half-amused splutter as Harry greets his cock, of all things. It certainly doesn't help when the damn thing twitches happily, as if returning Harry's cheerful salutation. He hmphs at the treacherous thing, and then he reaches out, cupping the back of Harry's skull in both hands to stop him from backing out. Then he angles his hips, swiping a glistening stripe of precome over Harry's lips.  _Soft. Pursed. Not for long,_  he suspects.

Harry tilts his head into the hands supporting him, rubs his ear against a wiry wrist. When those hands nudge him, bringing his head into in an odd sort of kiss against the tip of Snape's cock, he understands, hums his appreciation, parts his lips and licks the precome off.

His glasses are fogged up with the heat of Snape's skin and his own breath, but he doesn't need them, not this close. It's easier to go by feel, anyway. His hands come up, fighting with Snape's robes, and he understands all too well now why Snape had told him to strip before. More skin to taste can only be a good thing.

He thinks of Snape's devious tongue as he sticks his own tongue out and licks a thick wet swipe down Snape's cock to match his own marked lips.

Snape growls approval, even as he shelves for later perusal his inner surprise at Harry's compliance. For now, he's content to weave his fingers deeper among the unruly tufts of hair, arch his hips, and ease the slick head of his cock slowly into Harry's teasing mouth. He watches intently as he moves, ready to lunge backward at the first hint of protest, choking, teeth. At the first suggestion of second thoughts. At the first  _suspicion_  of them forming behind that wide green stare.

And Snape can be a very suspicious man indeed.

A twist of an open smile doesn't last: Harry's lips are wet and tense, forming a ring around his mouthful. He is still, at first, unsure of how to proceed and whether to move forward. Waiting, Snape can feel his quickened, shallow breath on his shaft, on the edge of wet heat where exposure to air ends and Harry's lips begin. Then Harry's cheeks go hollow as he sucks in another inch and his brow is furrowed in concentration as if this is another form of examination he's determined to get right, the first time around. Finally, Harry lifts his hand, grips the base of Snape's cock and slides it deeper into his mouth. His other hand is pressing down against the obvious tent in his trousers. Not rubbing or stroking, but pressing, as though he's annoyed by the distraction of his own body.

Snape's eyes are so wide as he stares down at Harry. The sensation of his cock being sucked is extraordinary enough, but the vision before him is beyond belief: not just Harry's utter absorption in Snape's cock, but the absent-minded press of Harry's free hand against his own erection, as if he's trying to ignore it, as if his own arousal doesn't even matter. It's so utterly contrary to what Snape had expected - that anything Harry did to him would have the sole goal of getting Harry off - that now he feels dazed, lightheaded with astonishment, as well as with the dizzying arousal of a blowjob that's all the more exquisite for its obvious inexperience.

Harry's inexperience... Somehow, that's a relief.

Harry's hand lifts from his lap, to slide around Snape, exploration or support or possibly both. His posture seems just as shaky as Snape's; he is lunging, focused on a single, solitary goal. He throws all of his concentration and effort into sliding his lips and tongue along Snape's cock, inhaling flesh instead of air as if it's the next breath he needs to survive. He grips Snape like a lifeline, but even beneath the focused intent of his whole body, there's an underlying calm: complete and utter bliss, impossible to miss. It's the serenity of someone who's exactly where he wants to be.

When Harry's hand slides tentatively around, fingers spread to cup Snape's arse, his arousal surges; his hips jolt instinctively, thrusting once, again,  _hard_. Panting, feeling the last shreds of his control fraying, he lifts one foot between Harry's spread thighs, rubbing gently at the underside of Harry's balls with the toe of his boot. It's all he can do to repay such lavish - and entirely unexpected - attentiveness. That and the gasped warning, "Coming..."

When Harry pulls back, Snape sighs inwardly with loss, with need, even as his whole body quivers on the brink of orgasm and self-doubt.  _Of course he doesn't want to swallow. I'm lucky he didn't bite..._  

But there's no caution, no doubt in the green gaze Harry turns on him. Just need. Just joy. Just a glimpse of teasing tongue between parted lips and a huff of warm, humid breath. "Yeahh..." And the firm, maddening grip of his hand sliding up and down Snape's shaft. Inevitable. Irresistible.

When Harry stays kneeling, holding Snape's spurting cock, letting it splatter his face with come, Snape can't silence the disbelieving moan that escapes him at the sight, at the idea that Harry could have  _chosen_  to do such an outrageously arousing thing. Snape sways, panting, off-balance in more than the merely physical sense. The hands that had held Harry's head relax their grip, fingertips sifting softly through the strands, as Snape tries to gather his scattered wits.

Nothing Harry had ever done to himself in the privacy of his own bed had felt anywhere near this arousing, this consuming. If anyone had told Harry that he'd come kneeling on a stone floor, thighs spread shamelessly, rubbing his bollocks against another man's boot, that man's come sprayed in his face, he never would've believed it. He would've believed it even less if they'd told him the man would be Snape! But it's all true and real, right here, right now: he did come, so hard, and Snape's coming too and it's so fucking hot Harry can only hold on for the ride and hope that this isn't a dream. He sinks his fingers into the clothed flesh of Snape's tight arse and presses his lips against the wet tip of Snape's cock and breathes in the hot, humid, musky scent of sex and arousal, as thick in his nostrils as the taste of come in his mouth, and just as real as the thawing armful of another panting human being in his arms, and  _WOW, this is what sex is like! It's amazing! It's more than amazing, it's brilliant! And Snape is just as brilliant as sex._  So brilliant and so amazing, and Snape just swooped in and turned his whole life upside down and shook it up for good measure in the course of a single weekend, so that Harry can't quite put into words how much this means to him, but that won't stop him from trying. So he looks up, over the fogged up, come-splashed lenses and meets Snape's dark gaze and nudges against his sallow hand, giving one fingertip a gentle nip.

"Wow," he breathes. "WOW!"

Snape's answer is a tentative, tell-tale twitch of a thin mouth. For once, his usually sallow cheeks are actually flushed. It's hard to see the color - what with all that black hair falling across his face like a curtain - but it's there.

Harry gathers his courage. "You know, what you said the other day, about, um, gloves. I've got some. They're even doeskin. I'll wear them when I'm peeling those mushrooms next time, if you, um. Want to keep going?" It's not what he wants to say to Snape - nothing witty or eloquent or smart, nothing like Snape would say - but perhaps it's a start. Harry's never been very successful at expressing his feelings on the first try.

Harry's offer is so very tempting for Snape, but his racing heartbeat reminds him that - unlike Harry - he's certainly no teenager to be up for another round so soon, no matter how absurdly provocative the brat is. Next time, he won't be caught on an impulse like this. He will be ready.

Next time...

So, after a desperate effort of will - or of  _won't_  - he sends Harry back to his dorm, before his housemates notice he's gone. The self-denial is necessary, as necessary as the  _Evanesco_  that cleans Harry's face of every suspicious trace. But that doesn't make it easy. It's not until after Harry's gone that Snape can even begin to think with his usual cool clarity.

* * *

All week long, Harry can barely sit still in Snape's lectures. Even the Latin names for random bulbs and slugs sound interesting and exciting, when the words are shaped by the curve of Snape's lips, when they reverberate in Snape's sexy voice.

_He isn't even looking at me, the git. He has to notice it when I squirm, he's got to know how his words affect me. Or does he?_

_Perhaps he does this all the time,_  the worrying idea ambushes Harry without warning.  _A weekend detention or two, with any student of his choice, and maybe an Obliviate afterwards. Who'd ever know? I wonder if anyone else got the chance to learn from him like I've been doing?_  Harry peers around the class, and not surprisingly his burning stare settles on the back of Malfoy's head; Harry's glare is so intense it's surprising that the perfectly groomed blond hair doesn't burst into flames.

_Or maybe he's showing me that weekdays are off limits,_  Harry consoles himself during Wednesday's class.  _But Saturdays - Saturdays are special, damn it!_  And Harry wiggles and fidgets and endures the agony of waiting for the next Saturday, so he can go back to Snape and prove to him just how special Saturdays really are.

* * *

Snape finds that being alone and concentrating doesn't work anywhere near as well as it usually does, in bringing order to this thoughts. That fact is enough cause for concern, let alone Harry's behaviour, which is even more uncharacteristic than Snape's own confusion. Despite his skeptical view of Harry's potions expertise, he tests himself for the entire gamut of love-, lust- and even liking-potions. When these tests all turn out negative, instead of feeling reassured, Snape turns at once to even wilder theories.  _What about Imperius?_  Snape wonders.  _I hear he resisted Crouch Jr.'s Imperius... Oh bollocks,_  Snape facepalms,  _how the hell could he possibly cast it on me without my even noticing?_

His collection of Foe-Glasses remains completely free of any bespectacled brats. His Sneakoscopes are silent and still, his Dark Arts Detectors entirely inert, and no potion in the world could remain this undetectable to the hands, eyes, and nose of a thoroughly paranoid potions master. So Snape tells himself, firmly and repeatedly, as the days pass and the weekend looms ever closer. Never before has Snape been so torn between anticipation and dread of its approach.

Alas, any suspicious substances are as inconspicuous as Harry is not, exhibiting an attentiveness toward Snape that is eager, joyful, almost perverse in its simple delight.

Gryffindors are all mad in their own ways, but Harry's special brand of cheerful insanity exceeds expectations.

In one of Snape's cupboards a luxuriant garden of Puck's Pestles grows, whole sprays of them thrusting upwards, firm and healthy and entirely free of toxic mould, thanks to Harry's gentle touch and deftness with a pruning knife. It's yet another reminder of expectations exceeded.

_He's a Gryffindor,_  Snape reassures himself.  _He thrives on danger. On unpredictability. On shock. On impulse. He'll be back._

* * *

Harry eyes the Saturday sunset with a week's worth of frustration. The days are getting longer, he notices, and those last added seconds of longer days pass so maddeningly slow as he waits, before heading out to stand on a familiar dungeon doorstep, and wait some more before delivering a first knock.

_Last chance,_  thinks Snape to himself as he startles at the first sign of his undeterred visitor. At least he hasn't made the mistake of growing accustomed to Harry's visits.  _Fine. If this doesn't scare him off, well..._  Even now, he can't quite summon enough hope to finish that thought. 

Instead, he rubs the oil from knuckles to wrist and lets it coat his arm up to the elbow. The oily fingers of his wand hand form a devious, daunting shape: a serpent's pointed head. 

With a mental effort, Snape dons a smirk. It's a far more effective mask than any the Death Eaters could boast.  _All or nothing. He'll be mine, or else he never was._  "Come."

Harry walks into the dark room, shedding glasses and clothes, shoes and socks. He drops his tie and his shirt. Snape's magic surrounds him instead of his robe, wrapping him in a protective embrace. He's levitated and held up, floating, suspended weightless in midair, and Snape's spell is as slick and inquisitive as Harry wants his hands to be. "What are you gonna do?" he asks, blinking blindly in a confused, trusting haze.

Snape's hands don't spare a second of wavering, immediately closing over Harry's tackle, in one slick, warm hold. At the end, a gentle, knowing twitch of a slick fingertip against Harry's arse in demonstration. "It's you who wanted to learn all about fisting, didn't you?" a voice purrs in his ear. "Well? Are you still...  _up_  for it?"

"Anything." Harry's hard cock twitches in Snape's hand; already he's half-undone by voice and touch. "Just... be careful, all right? I... I definitely haven't done that before. Remedially, or otherwise."

Snape's hands grow still. He tries to question himself, with the last shred of sanity not yet surrendered to Harry's particular blend of headlong lust.  _What are we doing?_  Harry floats in the grip of his magic, writhing in midair like an incubus and it's too damn hard...  _difficult,_  to hold onto any sort of thought.  _Damn, he really... must... like me. Must like **this!**_  Snape corrects himself hastily.

"Harry," Snape huffs at last, just as his fingers probe against Harry's entrance. "Who are you fooling? There are so many things you,"  _and I_  "haven't done. Didn't stop you before, did it?"

"No." Harry shakes his head. "Why would I stop? Let's keep going! Please!"

It's not fisting, not yet, but it's close. Harry is impaled on several fingers and suspended in the air like a trapped and ruffled and utterly irresistible lust demon, and Snape finds himself unable to resist floating up to join him. As Snape leans forward to taste the string of precome suspended from the tip of Harry's cock, he even begins to suspect that there is something seriously wrong with this Saturday. A personal project to probe Potter's prostate is not normally on the agenda in his dungeons on a Saturday. In fact, it never took place in any of the other days of the week. Until today.

And thus, suddenly, today becomes a special occasion indeed.

Something, somewhere, Snape thinks, must slip and slide and shift, this very second: along with the slow and slick push and twist, the clench of muscles past the widest point of his knuckles, sucking his hand in. There'll be another transformation, to pay for the way shock and ecstasy transforms Harry's face. And then this wild, wonderful spell of Saturday madness will be broken forever, and his life will return to its dreadful, ordinary, solitary reality. And that idea makes his heart jump in fear and prompts him to hold onto the young, sweaty, lust-delirious man in his arms and pull him close and thrust, skin against slick skin until he's sure that this is not a dream, until he, once more, reassures himself that it's real.

Real enough.

Harry's come spurts warm and slick into his hand, and they're wrapped around each other, arms and legs twined as Snape gently slides his hand free, and there's writhing and warmth and taut, tempting flesh to thrust against, so good until Snape too, comes, grunting and thrusting tightslickhotNOW.

He must have passed out there, just for a moment, he realises, as he wakes a blink. Harry's looking down at him. Green eyes. Impetuous grin. The whole irrepressible package.

As blunt and unmistakable as the cluster of Puck's Pestles dimly glowing on his shelf with a handwritten label:  _Requires special care, monitor growth daily._

"My turn?" The green-eyed brat has the insolence to ask afterwards. "Accio lube!"

As the lube slaps into Harry's palm, Snape's dazed gaze strays to his shelves and the glowing cluster of mushrooms that grows there. He's quite aware that after tonight he won't be able to tend them barehanded. The unicorns in the Forbidden Forest will never again let him close enough to comb loose hairs from their manes. There are almost ten dozen rites and warding enchantments and spells, Dark and mundane and quite useful - including twenty-three of his own invention - that he won't be able to perform anymore.

And he honestly doesn't care.

After an adult life filled with solitude and sacrifice, atoning for the stupidity of his youth, Snape finally begins to feel as though he can allow himself this.

* * *

"Gnnnh! Brilliant!"

Snape squints. The only physical 'brilliance' he sees is the coals in the fireplace, and they've burned so low they hardly count. No, he'd much rather look at the 'brilliance' of Harry's smile; he'd much rather bask in Harry's warmth, sprawled out on the floor side by side, in the nest of their combined clothing, shared breath easing down from panting, and fresh sweat settling on relaxed bodies. "What is?" he finally brings himself to ask.

"Never thought I'd find someone who's as kinky as I always wanted. And with a whole dungeon of his own! I can't believe my luck!"

Harry's enthusiasm has been... outstanding. "Tell me," Snape murmurs, in a rare moment of contentment when the only thing left to satisfy is idle curiosity. "Is it my dungeon or my kinks?"

"Both! An honest pervert is hard to find, Professor."

"Don't call me Professor. You've graduated."

"Huh?"

"No more lessons," Snape, sweaty, exhausted, and entirely pleased with the outcome, declares. "I couldn't be arsed to do any more teaching. It must be Sunday morning by now. You've earned your Dissipation Licence," he quips. "Now bugger off."

"Mm," Harry grins, not taking the dismissal seriously for a moment. Instead he rolls over with a lazy grin and begins kissing his way up Snape's cock; it twitches with a swift resurgence of interest entirely unsuited to a man of Snape's age. When, at length, the shameless imp releases Snape's cock with a pop of wet lips, he grins teasingly up at Snape. "Speaking of lessons, and buggering, do I get an O, or are you keeping them all to yourself today?"

"Naturally I am."

"Greedy sod." 

"Give me a moment, I'm not a bloody teenager."

"Lucky me!" the brat snorts, spilling more oil over his palms and rubbing them together. "All that and stamina too!"

That's when Snape sighs to himself, surrendering to his fate, and happily concludes,  _I've created a monster._

_Lucky me! Since apparently, an honest pervert is hard to come by._

_And fun to come with._

* * *

It's that time again. The Pruning of the Puck's Pestles.

Over his robes, Snape dons armor made of dragonbone and stabilized erumpent horn. Over that goes an apron of solid graphorn hide, soaked with shielding potions and antidote, embedded with protective runes. Over his arms and hands he pulls plate armor and gauntlets borrowed from one of the friendlier (and sturdier) suits of armor in the hallway. Afterwards, Snape picks up a shield: an odd, hairy and heavy lump of matter, made of impacted bezoars and bugbear hide. His ominously mistrustful stare is hidden behind a plague doctor's mask; its beak (even more impressive than his own) is stuffed full with cleansing herbs.

He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, adopts a grimly determined expression behind the mask, and strides toward what was recently a perfectly ordinary glass-fronted cupboard, and is now the site of a flourishing mushroom grove.

Or at least, he attempts to stride. Instead, the surprise of "WAIT!" shouted from the doorway, along with the combined weight of his precautions topples him ever so slowly backward, with the majestic inevitability of a felled tree.

When the last echoes of the CRASH fade, down to the inevitable tinny jingle which comes long after the worst cacophony, only then does Snape bother to express his opinion, in a heartfelt "Bugger."

The mushrooms swell up in their glowing glory and prod their tips against the glass, in an impudent gesture. Snape gives them a particularly filthy glare, from his position flat on the floor.

"I brought help!" Harry calls ever so cheerfully. "Don't move." Not, of course, that Snape  _can_ , right at the moment.

From the doorway, Neville Longbottom gives an awkward wave and hitches the sleeves up over his bare wrists. "T-that's... quite an infestation, Professor, have you ever considered hiring a p-professional to take care of it?"

"That," Snape declares with a scathing hauteur not at all dimmed by his position spreadeagled on the floor, "is hardly an 'infestation'! In fact it is a flourishing, vigorous growth of highly valuable ingredients which, fortunately for you, you happen to be suitable to harvest." He rakes Longbottom with a beady-eyed glare, and when the overmuscled lump of a boy refuses to properly wilt, he adds, "Well, if you're ever going to qualify for that Herbology professorship, you'll need practice at pruning mould,  _without_  damaging delicate fungal growths."

Said fungal growths thrust up a bit higher, waving cheekily at Longbottom and rubbing their heads against the glass, leaving wet smears behind.

Longbottom eyes the jauntily erect growths. "They look a bit familiar... Hm." He scratches his head. "Where've I seen that before?"

"Get snipping." Snape snaps before the smirk on his lips shows itself in his voice. "Or I'll save the job for a first-year's first detention."

Harry ducks his head in an attempt to hide his grin - an unsuccessful attempt, judging by the way Snape's glare turns Harry's way - and bends to help Snape struggle back to his feet.

"I'm fine, Potter, no need to fuss," Snape grumbles. His head turns, and the ivory proboscis serving as Snape's nose armour collides with Harry's cheek. 

Harry grins wider and taps the ivory tusk gently with a fingertip. "Impressive beak. What have you got inside?"

Snape pushes up the mask, all the better to treat Harry to the full force of his natural beak, casting a sharp shadow over his smirk. "Potter-bait." He arches his eyebrow. "I wouldn't bother sticking your nose in it just yet. After all, there may be more 'impressive' contents inside another armour piece." 

"Which piece? Codpiece, I hope?" Harry fires back with an eyebrow-waggle, shameless as ever.

Over by the cupboard, Longbottom splutters and turns as red as a quaffle.

A pair of overswelled mushrooms expresses approval with twin fountains of sticky white spores, then they promptly deflate into satisfied purple lumps in their pots.  


  


_"No one is more carnal than a recent virgin."  
\- John Steinbeck_

**Author's Note:**

> No virgins (whatever their age) were harmed in the making of this fic. Hippogriffs need love too. In case of emergency, read the Fucking Manual. Turn to page six-sixty-nine. No omissions, intermissions, or emissions in the library. Any frivolous self-indulgence may be monitored and/or recorded for quality control. May contain mushrooms, mould, and mortal danger. Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Snape. Do fondle the fungi, for they are tumescent and luminescent. Mind the gap. Nevermind the spores. All allergies are accidental. Side effects include sweating, swearing, accelerated heart rate and blood pressure. Any erection lasting longer than four hours should receive immediate medical attention (and admiration by all witnesses). Not to be taken without sufficient doses of lubrication. Fisting is in the eye (or other orifice) of the beholder. All participants are of age, in possession of sound mind and shaggable arse. Fruiting bodies FTW.


End file.
